What readers think of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, plus links to write your own review.

I am amazed that this book is so popular but readily acknowledge that I am in a small minority, other people have recommended it and seem to think it a work of considerable merit. The "discoveries" were quite effective and moderately exciting. The novel deals with crude extremes instead of subtle characterisation. What characterisation there is seems two dimensional. Dialogue is mechanical and you would hardly be able to tell who was speaking if you took the speeches out of context. Instead the writer relies on clumsy visual clues (tattoos and piercings - radical). The spicier elements of the book manage to be both nasty AND dull. The translator may have a good deal for which to answer and the book badly needed a decisive editor. I realise the book is not a travelogue, but for a beautiful country Larsson was unable to convey an intriguing sense of place. Half a Hollywood screenplay is all it ever was. Conrad, Dickens Woolf and Austen can all rest easy.

This book is not about Lisbeth Salander. It is about Mikael Blomkvist. The Blomkvist tale is highly improbable: I can't imagine hiring a journalist -- one on the losing end of a libel suit, disgraced, bound-for-jail -- to research and write the history of a prominent, albeit highly-dysfunctional family.

Worse, Larsson's penchant for using 20 words where one or two (or none) will do makes for a rather complex story that's sometimes very difficult to follow, and so a trial to read. (One hopes -- for clarity -- the published version will include a map of Hedeby Island.)

It's hard to say who the book would appeal to, but some knowledge on the reader's part of Swedish society and media is a must. The book's use of everyday detail (way too much, in my view) reminds one of Sue Grafton's novels. Some of the better scenes (typically those featuring Salander!) read a little like Thomas Perry.

But, bottom line, Stieg Larsson is no Henning Mankell...and Mankell to me is the gold standard in Northern European crime fiction.

It was so difficult to get into the book__-all that stuff about Blookvist...then a long boring story of a family, which went from one character to another and a disgusting ending, which I suspected all the time.

This was the most boring book I ever read. I don't understand why is is so popular. I am throwing it away.

Do editors even read the last third of any novel?

This is a book that cries out for a competent editor who would have had the back-bone to sit an author down and tell him frankly that he was losing credibility and focus.

There was such promise of a finely plotted and richly populated story as the novel began and moved to its midpoint. But as the novel progressed the light flickered and the plot vanished. We were left with the author rushing to three endings: one about the men who hate women, the second about what happened to the missing girl, and the third about revenge. Not one of these "stories" were connected to each other in a Believable Way. Improbable all.

A good editor would have helped clean up the focus.

A broken plot with poor characters (except for the Girl -- who is intriguing) but I will not be spending precious time reading the remainder of the series.

For a so-called "suspense novel", I thought this book was very boring. I could only force myself to read maybe half a chapter at a time. Definitely did not catch my interest at all. I have read other mystery suspense books and loved them, but this one, no thanks. I would not recommend it to anyone. The prologue was really the only part I kinda enjoyed.

OK...so I only got 3/4 through. This was just so poorly written---or translated? misogynist, and frankly, boring.